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Christine Salinas: dedicated, thoughtful, dependable

April 24, 2017April 24, 2017

Sanctuary for Families

It’s National Volunteer Recognition Week! Every day this week we’ll be highlighting a Sanctuary volunteer who will be honored at our Pillars of Change Volunteer Recognition Event on May 10th. Learn More and register for Pillars of Change.

Three years ago, Christine Salinas was searching for volunteer opportunities dealing with issues that were close to her heart: children and young people, domestic violence, and immigration. That’s when Christine found Sanctuary for Families.

After completing Sanctuary’s volunteer application, she was set up with an opportunity supporting childcare staff at the Queen’s Family Justice Center. “Despite their situations, I found that their experiences didn’t stop them from being kids”, she remembers, “They are incredibly resilient plus they help me stay young!”

Due to Christine’s Spanish language skills, she soon transitioned into another volunteer role: providing written document translations within Sanctuary’s volunteer-led Translation Project, which fulfills translation requests in multiples languages from staff throughout the agency.

The best part of this new role for Christine: translations can be completed virtually, via e-mail, in the volunteer’s own time. “Many volunteer opportunities are not available after 5pm but I was extremely fortunate to have found Sanctuary”, she explains.

Christine has become an indispensable part of the Translation Project, having completed over 50 unique translations with a cumulative donation of almost 150 hours of her time and skills supporting Sanctuary staff and clients.

Christine has translated everything from birth certificates, divorce decrees, and asylum applications to transcriptions of videos, outreach and training materials, and children’s books. She always makes herself available for translations and often replies with an enthusiastic, “keep ‘em coming!” to requests from Volunteer Program staff.

In addition to the superhuman speed in which Christine is able to complete translations, her attention to detail and genuine care for Sanctuary’s clients has not gone unnoticed. As such, Christine has been continuously entrusted with sensitive translation requests that require a volunteer with the strongest sense of confidentiality, professionalism, and thoroughness.

Not only has Christine never disappointed, staff consistently rave about the quality and efficiency of her work.

Christine intends to build upon her passion for helping others (with help from her newly-developed skills in both English and Spanish legal jargon) to pursue a career as a lawyer within the social services field. We wish luck to Christine in all of her endeavors and hope to keep her involved in Sanctuary’s work for a long time to come!

We look forward to celebrating Christine’s service at Pillars of Change on May 10, 2017.

You can join us at Pillars of Change by registering now. We hope to see you there!